Constitutional Crisis

The unconstitutional
decisions of the President Ratu Josefa Iloilo has thrown
Fiji into a deeper political crisis.

Most lawyers,
politicians, and prominent citizens as well as the
diplomats, have expressed disbelief that the flagrant
violation of the law and the Constitution by the
President.

The series of acts which culminated in the
reappointment of Laisenia Qarase began when the Council of
Chiefs decided not to invite the Prime Minister to its
meeting. The Prime Minister is an ex-officio member of the
Great Council of Chiefs.

Next, the GCC did not consult the
Prime Minister in the appointment of the President and the
Vice-President. Under the Constitution the GCC must consult
with the Prime Minister in appointing the
President.

Third, the President claimed he dismissed the
elected Prime Minister. This dismissal is against the
Constitutional provisions.

Fourth, he appointed another
Prime Minister, his nephew Ratu Tevita Momoedonu, again in
breach of the Constitution.

Fifth, he accepted the
resignation of the newly appointed Prime Minister within 20
hours and accepted his advice of a dissolution of the
Parliament.

Sixth, he re-appointed Laisenia Qarase as the
Prime Minister, once more in serious breach of the
Constitution.

These unconstitutional acts call into
question the sincerity of the regime in upholding the
Constitution and the law of the land.

It also seriously
tarnishes the integrity of the Office of the President, the
highest authority in the land. That the President may have
been advised wrongly by bureaucrats is another matter of
serious concern. It doesn't even take a law graduate to
figure out the gross violation of the Constitution by the
President. The least which the bureaucrats could have done
is to alert the President of the illegality of his planned
acts as and when they were made aware of them. And surely
they were aware of this. While the law protects civil
servants from liability for wrong advice given to decision
makers, the fact remains that many of Fiji's governments and
decision makers have perished because of the poor quality of
advice given by the bureaucrats. In the present case, the
office of the Solicitor-General, which looks after the
interest of the state, should not have been allowed to be
used in the way it was.

What is more disconcerting is the
claim by some that the President's speech was actually
drafted in the Prime Minister's office. That it was a
conspiracy hatched by some of the Qarase regime team and
some bureaucrats to keep Fiji away from a constitutional
rule, can not be ruled out.

It is even more worrying that
the military says it knows of the unconstitutional decisions
of the President. By not advising the President, who is the
Commander-in-Chief of the army, of the legalities, the
military has also failed in its duty to uphold the
Constitution and to safeguard the integrity of the Office of
the President, and certainly to prevent the Office from
being used by unscrupulous politicians and
bureaucrats.

The cost to the nation of the decisions made
during the past two days, and which are expected to be made
today, is immense. It is the final blow to the nation's
integrity and image.

In response to the challenges facing Scoop and the media industry we’ve instituted an Ethical Paywall to keep the news freely available to the public.
People who use Scoop for work need to be licensed through a ScoopPro subscription under this model, they also get access to exclusive news tools.

MPs in UK's House of Commons this morning have rejected British Prime Minister Theresa May's amended Brexit deal... If a no-deal option is rejected, MPs could get a vote on Friday on whether to request a delay to Brexit from the EU. More>>

All but unnoticed, two of the world’s nuclear powers have been preparing to go to war this week. Military action has been ramping up between India and Pakistan over (as usual) the disputed territory of Kashmir... More>>